We hope that India will be among top 100 in ease of doing business: Sinha

New Delhi: India will be among the top 100 countries in the World Bank’s list of ease of doing business ranking next year, Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said on Monday.

We are very hopeful that next year when ease of doing business ranking comes we will have moved from 130 to being in top 100,

Sinha expressed his hopes for India’s position in the World Bank’s list of ease of doing business when he was delivering his speech in Karur Vysya Bank – Dun & Bradstreet SME Business Excellence Awards 2015 function in New Delhi.

“We have moved up 12 ranks in the ease of doing business… ” This ranking was based on may 2015 and many of the important initiatives that we have taken are only now starting to bear fruits.

The World Bank in a report released last month ranked India 130 out of 189 countries in the ease of doing business, moving up 12 places from last year.

Speaking to reporters here earlier in the day, Sinha said a high-powered committee to suggest a revenue-neutral rate for the proposed goods and services tax (GST) will submit its report in the first week of December.

We just had a consultation with the chief economic adviser and his committee that has been studying the question of revenue neutral rate. They have pulled together a lot of data from many different sources,

Sinha also said the government was in continuous talks with the opposition parties on the proposed GST Bill.

We have finalized the parameters that will be necessary to establish the rates. That is now being looked at. We will have something by the first week of December.

The constitution amendment bill for GST has been passed by the Lok Sabha and is pending in Rajya Sabha where the ruling NDA does not have the majority.

We are trying to talk with them (opposition) about all the aspects of GST. We all recognize how important this is for the economy for all of India so we are in continuous discussion to see what we can do to get it passed in the winter session,

The minister said the actual rate of GST is to be set not by a constitutional amendment but by the GST bill.

Of course we have had some input that there should be a rate that is fixed by the constitution amendment itself. So that is an item under discussion, but as of now our view is that it should be in the GST bill and not in a constitutional amendment,

The Rajya Sabha Select Committee has suggested that the GST rate should not go beyond 20 percent as higher rates could fuel inflationary tendencies.

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim has announced that he is stepping down as the head of the premier anti-poverty institution putting the likely choice of its future leadership in the hands of US President Donald Trump, a sceptic of international development.

Trump’s role is expected reinvigorate challenges to Washington’s monopoly on appointing the Bank’s head.

Announcing his decision on Monday, Kim said in a tweet: “It’s been the greatest privilege I could have ever imagined to lead the dedicated staff of this great institution to bring us closer to a world that is finally free of poverty.”

Kim, 59, who is dropping out 19 months into his second term on February 1, would be joining a private company and focus on infrastructure investments in developing countries, the Bank said.

The Bank’s CEO Kristalina Georgieva will become the interim president till a successor to Kim is appointed.

As the largest share-holder, the US by tradition appoints the head of the Bank, while Europeans determine the chief of the International Monetary Fund.

Kim was nominated for the job by former President Barack Obama in 2012.

Before Trump’s election, Kim was hastily re-appointed in September 2016 to a second term that began in July 2017 with an eye on pre-empting a possible Trump nominee getting the job.

Now, however, Trump will get an opportunity to nominate the Bank’s head.

Trump’s role will resurrect and strengthen challenges to the post-World War II model of the leadership of the 189-member bank that has always been determined by the US .

Already the US nominee was challenged for the first time in 2012 by two contenders.

Now there will be robust demands for reconsidering the US leadership of the Bank and stronger non-American contenders for the job.

Kim, a South Korea-born US citizen, was an unusual leader for the Bank: He was a medical doctor by training, a specialist in public health and an academic with a Harvard doctorate in anthropology who had led the Ivy League Dartmouth College.

But his background in health was a plus for the Bank’s mission of fighting poverty and promoting development.

Under his leadership, the Bank adopted in tandem with the UN the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 and focusing on the bottom 40 per cent of the population in the developing world.

The Bank’s International Development Association, which funds programmes in the least developed countries, achieved two record replenishments during his tenure, the last one in 2016 for $75 billion.